While it’s fine for a lot of apps to simply do what they do without any network connection, many of the ones you use most often need to go online. That’s what the March session of Tampa iOS Meetup is all about: making your first steps in writing apps with network programming. By the end of this session, you’ll be ready to write your own simple networked iOS applications and have enough knowledge to start tackling more complex networked application development.

We’ll start with the concepts of network programming, introduce you to a number of classes and constructs in Swift that you’ll find useful for networking, and then put together a couple of simple apps that grab online data to do something useful, including an app that answers an incredibly simple question: “Do I need my umbrella today?”

There’s more to building an app than just programming, so we’ll also look at issues like usability and design, and other factors you need to consider when building an app.

If you’ve hit some kind of wall with learning iOS development, come on down! We always leave some time to discuss issues and problems you may be having while learning how to build iOS apps. We’re here to help!

Tampa iOS Meetup is a monthly meetup run by local mobile developer/designer Angela Don and Yours Truly. While Tampa has a couple of great iOS developer meetups — Craig Clayton’s Suncoast iOS and Chris Woodard’s Tampa Bay Cocoaheads, we figured that there was room for a third iOS meetup in the Tampa Bay area, and especially one that would stray into other areas of mobile development. So we made one.